Nexus 1 Balance issues

[Mazryonh]

I've compiled a list of balance issues for Nexus 1 that should be resolved by Nexus 2, or if they decide to release an "enhanced" version of Nexus 1 to the public.  As excellent as the battle system in Nexus 1 was, there were a fair number of exploits that would be real problem in multiplayer (or a badly-programmed AI).  I would hate to see these rear their ugly heads again in Nexus 2, so for the benefit of the devs I'll send this list to them once the users on this forum give the list a good look.  Constructive criticism will be appreciated.

First up are capital ship weapons that can be exploited or abused in Nexus 1.

CAPITAL SHIP WEAPONS

1. Energy Bomb Spamming

Energy Bombs, when spammed, can strip the shields of entire enemy fleets, and they have unlimited ammunition. Even if the targeted fleet attempts to close with the ships using Energy Bombs to catch the users in their own blast radius, this does nothing to stop the combat into degenerating into a very fast exercise about who can spam the most direct-fire hull weapons, especially since railguns are so accurate.

Possible Solutions (in any combination):

-Make E-bombs interceptible, or else make them have a smaller blast radius when intercepted.
-Give them limited ammo with no more than one launcher per ship.
-Make them non-cumulative (in other words either only one launcher per ship, or ones from the same side cancel each other out so the shield damage of only one detonation is counted).
-Give them a minimum range, explained as a "safe distance" they must travel before arming themselves.

2. Laser Spamming

Lots of lasers trained on a single target can disable or destroy many devices on a ship before its devices are even identified. The Ghost faction's ships are pretty much restricted to this tactic.

Possible Solutions (in any combination):

-Change lasers so they fire at random hull points on a ship that has not had any of its devices identified, or else can't fire at all ("unable to complete task").
-Give Ghost ships access to more weapon types (the simplest would be access to Plasma Guns).
-See the "Device Disabling" subsection in the "Gameplay Elements" section for further details.

3. Missiles

These weapons are too difficult to use for too little payoff (all you get is a moderate reduction in hull integrity in ships caught in the explosion, and that is IF all the ships in question have no functioning flak weaponry or fighters to intercept the missiles). If they are really spammed (as in the "Fight for Earth" mission in Nexus 1), then they can destroy entire fleets. They also fry small craft caught in the blast radius.

Possible Solutions (in any combination):

-Give missiles some flak damage resistance.
-Remove their shield-piercing abilities.
-Let them detonate in a smaller radius when intercepted.
-Remove their small craft damage.
-Give them a minimum range before the warhead arms.
-Change their gameplay role--instead of area-effect weapons, they are now turned into "super-torpedos" like real-life anti-ship missiles are. They cannot pierce shields (though they do moderate anti-shield damage upon a hit), but deal a great deal of hull damage to an unshielded ship if they hit and are not intercepted. To balance this you wouldn't be able to carry more than one launcher.

4. Torpedo Spamming

Torpedoes penetrate shields and can deal hull damage right through shields.  A ship can be crippled or destroyed by torpedo spam even if its shields never went down.

Possible Solution:

-Make torpedoes interceptible by flak weapons on capital ships or fighter weapons, or make torpedoes completely blocked by shields. This would reduce or eliminate the problem of torpedo spam.

[Mazryonh]

SMALL CRAFT

1. General Issues

As a whole, many small craft are too vulnerable, especially when docking onto a ship or taking off. This is largely due to the fact that flak lasers (which shouldn't be limited to just green flashes when hitting small craft the camera can lock onto) can penetrate any form of shield. They are also too easily shot down by flak weapons from enemy ships, and carry too much ammunition for their weaponry in almost every case.

Possible Solutions (in any combination):

-Make (capital ship) flak weapons unable to penetrate any shield type. This would be the most important solution.
-Speed up the docking/take-off process.
-Squadrons of small craft should consolidate into new squadrons if they have suffered casualties. For example, if the max small craft per squadron for a specific class is 3, and a squadron of that class with 2 members docks on a capital ship with another squadron of its class with 1 member, the two squadrons will combine into a single 3-member squadron.  The aim of the algorithm controlling this should be to create as many full-strength squadrons as possible.
-Small craft should take a period of time to be repaired and reloaded. The stronger they are, the more time this takes, reduced appropriately for the crew's engineering stat. The vanilla game repairs and reloads small craft instantly. 
-Reduce the effectiveness of capital ship flak weapons, possibly replacing them with projectile weapons rather than hitscan beams.
-Small craft should have lower maximum ammunition reserves.
-Change their AI routines to take full advantage of Newtonian physics, such as jinking using their vernier thrusters while staying on target, using Babylon 5 style strafing runs, or the "moving away while shooting at a target" tactic. This would allow them many more attack opportunities rather than just closing straight on with their targets.

2. Space Fighters

These small craft are the most limited in the game. Their weapons cannot penetrate shields, and many capital ship weapons can't be intercepted by fighter weapons. Even deploying them against incoming enemy gunboats or bombers can't interfere with their attacks short of destroying them, which makes them not very useful against huge amounts of bombers or gunboats. Many capital ship attacks cannot be intercepted either.

Possible Solutions (in any combination):

-Make their flak weapons (which should not be hitscan weapons) more effective than capital ship flak weapons, which would make them more valuable for interception and small craft defense.
-Fighters should have a low-ammunition-capacity (probably no more than 4 shots), secondary weapon that fires slowly but can damage devices through shields.
-Change the AI routines of Gunboats or Bombers, so that when they are under attack by fighters, the attacked Gunboats/Bombers must take evasive maneuvers and can't attack their targets as often.
-See other solutions for making more capital ship weapons interceptible.

3. Space Gunships

Gunships are too effective (when spammed) at destroying enemy devices for too little cost. They are also one-dimensional, unlike fighters and bombers.

Possible Solutions (in any combination):

-Gunships should carry less maximum ammo, be less able to penetrate shields with anti-small craft components, fire shorter bursts, and be less accurate (they should fire in a cone-shaped pattern or a strafing line rather than a straight line that always homes in on the targeted device).
-Gunships should also carry a slower-firing, less accurate version of fighter main guns, but it should be a version that cannot be targeted, so they can only defend themselves, not take the fight to an enemy, and thus would also be useless for intercepting capital ship weapons.

4. Space Bombers

These small craft are usually more of an annoyance than an actual threat, due to their somewhat low hull DPS (this is most likely due to how effective shields with anti-bomber/gunboat components are against their weapons). They are also somewhat overpriced in resource points for their utility, and their self-defense flak lasers are a little too effective against attacking fighters.

Possible Solutions (in any combination):

-Make them fire a conical spray of anti-hull projectiles for their primary attacks to increase their chance of some getting through the shields.
-Decrease maximum ammunition load for bombers and increase reload and repair times for them, since they are the toughest class of small craft.
-Decrease their hangar bay space requirement and resource point mounting costs by a moderate amount.
-Make Noah bombers look less like flying moon-shaped biscuits. 
-Decrease the effectiveness of their rear-firing flak lasers.
-If bombers had specialty loads to inflict status effects on capital ships they attack, they would increase in tactical value immensely. These specialty bomber loads would be delivered by bombers and attach themselves to capital ships, where they would stay until removed by the ship's engineers, or their batteries run out of power, or (depending on the type) get shot off by friendly fighters (which is the fastest method, but of course would require lowering the afflicted ship's shields).
-Some specialty bomber loads could include "mass augmenters" which decrease an afflicted ship's maximum speed or maneuverability (this effect increases with more of them attached to a ship), "power drainers" which interfere with a ship's weapon power generators and lower its rate of fire, or a "Sensor Scrambler" pod that causes non-homing weapons on the afflicted ships to be less accurate, etc.

5. Commando Ferries

These are pretty much useless for general combat given their fragility, inability to bypass/penetrate shields, and very limited window of usefulness (since the commandos get killed so quickly), outside of achieving certain bonus objectives.

Possible Solutions (in any combination):

-Improve their resilience to flak weapons, and possibly let them replenish their commando members whenever they dock onto a friendly capital ship.
-Consider replacing them with boarding pods (detailed below).
-Consider letting AI ships controlled by factions with an overabundance of fanatical or easily-replaced soldiers (such as the Vardrags with their cybernetically-controlled Raptors, the Gorgs, or the Sibling) become common users of commandos whenever an enemy ship's shields are down. Like the Raptor Carrier-class ship or the Locust Queen, AI ships of these factions could continually respawn commando ferries or boarding pods so that they always remain a threat.

[Mazryonh]

GAMEPLAY ELEMENTS

1. Device Disabling

On a whole, certain devices are too centralized to make military or engineering sense (prudence requires that you have backups of every critical system that are hard to shut down). It is too easy to cripple a capital ship's engines/weapon power generators/shield generators etc. permanently with enough laser fire/gunboats/etc. Only the Angelwing can regenerate devices that have been completely destroyed.

Possible Solutions (in any combination):

-Certain devices are now indestructible and therefore can only be disabled, not destroyed.  This list should include shield generators (since they are the only way many ships can restore at least some of their strength), backup weapon power generators (a component that for some reason cannot be mounted on anything larger than a destroyer in the original game, so it needs to be mountable on more ship classes), flak systems, normal class weapons, etc. This would allow a ship to be hobbled (until repairs are done) but no longer permanently crippled as is the case right now.

-Increasing power allocation to suppport devices will decrease the damage all devices (by a moderate amount at 150%, and a greater amount at 200%) take as long as that power rate is maintained, but this power allocation by itself won't repair damaged devices.

-Assigning a greater repair priority to a device will reduce the damage it takes from anti-device attacks (because the engineers are where they are needed most to deal with problems), as well as the usual repair rate increase.

-A balanced version might cause devices to gradually lose effectiveness as they are damaged (weapons become less accurate, engines become slower, shields take more damage, etc.)--they are considered disabled at 25% health, destroyed at 0% health, and cannot return to operation until they repair themselves to 50% health. 

2. Focus Fire

The eventual bane of almost any ship, Focus Fire needs to be toned down a bit. Enemy AI on weaker ships don't handle focus fire very well. Battleships don't have much recourse (given their lack of maneuverability) other than to turn on ECM, Combat Engines, and set shields to 200%. The Combat Engines of Battleships are more for evading anti-device fire rather than anti-shield or anti-hull fire, so enough focus fire will take them out in very short order.

Possible Solutions (in any combination):

-Adjust AI routines on enemy destroyers/frigates to get them to turn on Deflection Engines, ECM, and 200% power on shields or engines to make them less like pushovers (since these measures make them harder to hit and more resilient). This would in turn make device destroying attacks or small craft more valuable in order to weaken them sufficiently for outright destruction, or in the case of small craft attacks, their increase maneuverability would not be very useful against small craft.
-Give battleships a boost to their maximum shield HP levels and support energy ratings to really let them absorb a beating and remain operational.
-Introduce a new gameplay element to let friendly ships transfer support energy/shield HP between each other, via new ship components at an efficiency rate that depends on the quality of the energy/shield HP transfer components.
-Add a new "Defend Ship" command that is applicable only to allied or neutral ships. This command will make a ship that has been issued this command attack the targeted allied ship's attackers, and if it has the shield strength, even block shots fired from enemies at that targeted ally by positioning itself in the path of those shots. Its own flak systems will also prioritize interceptible attacks targeting the ship its defending, rather than itself.